Fare Exchange: How to make Caramel Pie and un-gummy dumplings

Good morning, good company. I am grateful for the pleasure of your tasty company this morning and every Wednesday you can make it. And here we help others with food they want to make: a cookie made with crushed potato chips and pretzels and more, recipes for a vegetarian diet called "Forks Over Knives," and any recipe made with 100 percent whole wheat.

Cookie Monster is hot on the trail of a new cookie to add to her collection -- one "made with crushed potato chips, pretzels, butterscotch morsels, chocolate chips and peanut butter. That's all I know but I've got to have it."

And here is the opposite end of the spectrum, one requested by Euela Laubenheim. "I have watched a commentary called 'Forks Over Knives' and it is about a vegetarian diet with many other restrictions. I don't even know where to begin in implementing that diet, and I would love some recipes to help."

Yeast of the Ridge has read all about dumplings and will find more in the lines below, but she wants help with all kinds of recipes that are 100 percent whole wheat. "These can either be new recipes, or remakes of old ones. I am not very good at guessing and so (I) need precise instructions, and I would love the help of other readers."

Carolyn Patterson got this recipe from her grandmother, and describes it as a true favorite.

Caramel Pie

1 cup sugar, separated

1/4 cup flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 eggs, separated (Use whites for meringue.)

1 tablespoon butter

3/4 cup milk

Mix 3/4 cup sugar, flour, salt, egg yolks and butter well. Add milk and cook in a double boiler over hot, not boiling, water until thick.

In a skillet place 1/4 cup sugar and melt. Combine sugar with first mixture in double boiler when both mixtures are boiling hot. Cook until blended. Put into an uncooked pastry shell and cover with meringue recipe of your choice.

Nancy Ruby is up next, and she affirms that chicken and dumplings is a dish that "I loved growing up, that my children loved, and that we continue to enjoy. My grandmother, mother and I made homemade biscuit dough and rolled it thin and dusted it well with flour to drop in the broth to cook, covered, until done. I recall a friend's aunt instructing us, saying the shortening for the dough should be about the size of a biddy egg.

"In more recent years I have stooped to using the frozen dumplings as well as flour tortillas. Both are adequate but not as good as homemade.

"Just in the last year, I have been buying a good brand of canned biscuits, rolling them thin and floured on both sides and cutting them in strips. They have been as good as homemade and with a lot less trouble."

Ms. Ruby also weighed in on the subject of chicken.

"When I was feeding hungry boys, I always stewed the entire chicken and made lots of broth. Now, with just the two of us, I usually bake the chicken and we will eat part of it for a meal. I boil the remainder to make stock and remove the meat from the carcass to add to the dumplings. ... I have also used the remainder of a store-bought rotisserie chicken to make stock. "

And here's an interesting idea from Ms. Ruby, easy as pie (well, easier than pie), using healthful sauerkraut.

"Another tasty and easy chicken dish, which was passed on to me by a friend who learned it from her Pennsylvania Dutch grandmother, is to stuff the carcass with a can of kraut prior to baking."

Elaine Powell of Lookout Mountain has a "quite different" dumpling recipe from the ones printed previously. Here are her general suggestions.

"I learned to make dumplings from my grandmother. My family seems to think I have a pretty good recipe.

"I've never added vegetables to my chicken. I use self-rising flour, shortening and buttermilk to prepare dough. The dumplings should be cut to 1/2-inch strips and then cut to 1/2-inch cubes before dropping into hot broth. Dumplings rise as they cook. People that do not like dumplings say that because the dough is too gummy when dough is cut too big. The dough in the middle doesn't cook properly. Try the smaller dough pieces for more tender dumplings. Even non-dumpling eaters have said mine are very good."

I have all kinds of visions here of grandmothers leaning over the stove, stirring the magic as they say to their granddaughters, "a little bit of this here, a little bit of that there," while their grandchildren look on in loving attention. And of course this can be man's work and grandson's work, as well, as we have seen. I, who never knew a grandparent, think this sounds nothing short of bliss.

And what will we grandmothers do today? As we drive through the pick-up window, will we instruct our grandchildren, "Be sure to order No. 3; it's the best"? Aah, no, I think homemade magic is still a reality, and always will be.

For those who love dipping sauces in Asian meals, Barbara sent her two favorites.

Plum Sauce

1/2 cup plum preserves

1/4 cup finely chopped onion

1/4 cup apricot preserves

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons apple cider or juice

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 tablespoons catsup

1 garlic clove, minced

In a small saucepan, combine all ingredients. Cook, stirring occasionally, over low heat to allow flavors to blend.

Japanese Shrimp Sauce

1 cup mayonnaise

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

3 tablespoons rice vinegar

2 tablespoons melted butter

3/4 teaspoons paprika

3/8 teaspoon garlic powder

In a small bowl, combine mayonnaise, granulated sugar, rice vinegar, melted butter, paprika and garlic powder. Mix well, cover and refrigerate.

Now, perhaps some of you will send foods to dollop or pour these sauces over.

We recently took a trip to Orlando on the quite amazing Megabus and, at our only meal stop at a fast-food restaurant attached to a service station, one of our fellow riders was sitting down to a huge container of rice laden with vegetables. As I headed over to ask her where she found that, my husband explained, "She brought that from home and heated it up here." What a fine idea, one I plan to implement on the next Megabus ride.

Keep up all your good ideas, and the rest of us will be watching for you next week.